


Shared Burdens

by Harukami



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Magic's Price, Medren is absolutely worried about Stefen and determined to make sure that nothing happens to him. Stefen's reactions, though, don't have any clear explanation...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Burdens

"Lifebonded? Are... are you _sure_?"

Jisa's hand had covered her mouth in her shock, and Medren couldn't blame her. Lifebonded herself or not, there'd been too much recently to illustrate how terrible it was to _lose_ that. Randale recently dead, Shavri in the slow, painful process of following him... there was too much for Jisa to deal with already. And even talking about Vanyel's death by itself would hard in the face of all that loss. She'd loved her Uncle Vanyel like a second father, everyone knew that. Medren could understand; he had too.

Still. There was no avoiding the issue.

So Medren leaned forward, nodding. "They weren't particularly talkative about it, but I'd noticed it in Stefen before, and in that assassination attempt at Forst Reach, it became open knowledge in our family. Van would have died right then if it hadn't been for Stef's lifebond feeding him energy."

"What a way to find out about this," Treven muttered.

It was, and he wished he could be more delicate about it. But he had such little time. With Randale's death, the Heir was in constant meetings and appointments, preparing for his upcoming coronation. Getting all the invites out and ceremonial elements set up could take a good eight, nine months, but Treven was still in charge, regent until he was king, so on top of the preparations he had to be dealing with the politics of the situation. Medren had only got this chance to talk to them at all by mentioning a secret detail about Vanyel—and he doubted he'd have much time to approach it carefully before Treven's attention had to be taken away again.

"I'm sorry," Medren said. "I wish I didn't have to say this. But we need to have people keeping an eye on Stefen. You understand—"

"Yes," Jisa said. "No question. Do you mind continuing to room with him? We'll have to delay giving Uncle Van's old room over to him, but if he shouldn't be alone..."

"I'll talk to Vanyel's parents," Treven said. "I can keep them in discussion about what should be done with his things and draw it out."

Medren nodded again, feeling remarkably helpless. "I've been keeping an eye on Stef so far, but—"

"Guard on his door," Jisa agreed, pale. "Don't worry. We'll try to get him through the danger period. I won't have him die too."

***

And there _should_ have been a danger period, but Stef was acting... if not normal, at least not like he was a danger to himself. He made it through the funeral without any incidents, and after, when Medren expected to find him at his worst, he instead found Stefen sitting at his writing desk, gazing into the middle distance as he penned music.

"Hey Stef," he said, cautious. "Doing okay?"

"I doubt you or anyone else will let me kill myself," Stefen answered in a perfectly reasonable tone, and looked up at him with a distracted, unsmiling wryness. "I'm just working."

"What're you working on?"

Normally, Stefen and he shared their compositions freely, critiqued them at all stages. Stef just looked at him blankly, though, as if staring through him. "Hm?"

Something uneasy moved through Medren's stomach. "You said you were working. What are you working on?"

"Oh..." Stefen looked back down at the music. "I'll show you when it's done."

That much was reassuring, at least to some extent. Music took a while to compose, to write, to get right. If he was talking about getting it done, that was at least some time to hopefully get Stefen past the worst of it. But Medren wasn't really convinced. Even if he hadn't heard the horror stories about those who had lost their lifebonded—nor seen it going on with Shavri right now—he'd know something was wrong with Stefen. There was something dead in his eyes, something radiating darkness. He seemed incapable of focusing directly on anything, as if that darkness got in between him and whatever he was looking at. 

Medren could only assume it was that _lack._ As much as it was the ideal, he wasn't sure he ever wanted to lifebond himself. Losing a love would be hard enough for anyone, but losing true love...

"Do you want to talk?" he heard himself say.

Stef blinked, and almost seemed to focus on his face for a moment, hazel eyes still dark. "Oh... no," he said. "Thanks, Medren. There's nothing to talk about." And his gaze unfocused again, wandering vaguely back to the page he was working on.

 _I suppose there wouldn't be_ , Medren thought, and found himself grateful that Jisa had promised a guard of some kind. There was no way it was going to be an easy time in the upcoming months, and he had to sleep once in a while.

***

But the upcoming months _were_ quiet. Stef noticed the people who coincidentally always seemed to have business around his door, of course, and Medren knew he noticed, but he just sort of shrugged.

"Of course," he said at one point, to Medren. "I know you're worried."

"Only because I care about you," Medren said. "You're like a brother to me, Stef."

"I've never had any family, so I wouldn't know," Stef said. "...You know I adore you, Medren. I appreciate the feelings behind this. But you have to let go."

Medren shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "It's—you can survive this. I know you don't want to, but you're working hard to do so anyway. I appreciate that."

"Oh," Stefen said, almost surprised. "That's—sure. Of course, Medren."

Still, Medren didn't feel like he could quite relax.

***

Nine months past, Sovvan was coming up, with Shavri's memorial and Trev's coronation shortly after, and things got busy. Medren was given an invite to attend a festival out of town as a performer. The guests in attendance were high ranking, and not taking it would be a setback. Still, he hesitated.

"Go on," Stef urged him. "Look, I'll just be busy working on my composition. It's not like I've got any interest in celebrating Sovvan—" or celebrating _anything_ , Medren thought "—so just go, spend a couple of nights."

"Don't do anything to hurt yourself," Medren said, and took Stef's hands. "Promise me, Stef."

"I promise," Stefen said promptly. "I'd rather avoid pain."

At least there was still a guard nearby. Medren squeezed Stefen's hands and tried to reassure himself of that. 

***

He came back a week later to find the room empty, and Stefen's composition sitting on Medren's bed, and he swore helplessly, repeatedly, into his own hands. Of course there hadn't been a guard. Everyone was distracted with Treven's coronation, with everything else that had been going on in this hellhole, and after nearly a full year without a single incident to keep people on alert, who would spare the time and attention for one Bard who was apparently managing just fine on his own?

That was just like Stefen, Medren though, a little bitter. He was an opportunist and didn't want to put anyone out, all at once. Probably nobody had even noticed he was gone.

Medren wanted to run out immediately, but there was no point. Stefen could have gone anywhere to do it; he doubted they'd have any news until the body was found—if then. If Stefen had taken off his Scarlets, there wouldn't be any reason for anyone to alert the Collegium.

Slowly, struggling to hold in tears, he sat down on his bed and picked up the composition. Stefen had marked out the musical notes in clear, deliberate ink, a clean copy after all his scribblings these many months. The lyrics sat above the vocal line, and Medren forced himself to breathe deeply, to focus enough to be able to read it.

It was called Magic's Price, and the tune itself was nothing remarkable; the sort of upbeat driving pace that would signal a standard heroic ballad. The lyrics, though...

The lyrics were brilliant, and they were bitter.

It was Vanyel's story, and Stefen's, and even before he was halfway through Medren realized what Stefen had been doing here. Praising the strength of will and determination to protect Valdemar with one hand and condemning the reliance on Herald-Mages and the brutal cost of it with another, Stefen was writing the definitive ballad. Nobody would question it, and once this was out in the public ear, with Stefen as the known author—Stefen who acknowledged himself as Vanyel's lover in the song itself—it would trivialize any other ballads anyone tried to write on the subject. Nobody could know better than Stefen how things had been.

Medren made it to Vanyel's death and a small breath escaped him.

  
So Stefen rode, and so it is no living tongue can tell  
How Vanyel fought, nor what he wrought, nor how the Herald fell. 

_You don't know_ , Stefen had told them, bluntly. _Nobody was there who lived. Nobody has the right to talk about it, to dramatize it, to make it something easy to summarize. There will be no version of Vanyel's death that becomes palatable and glorious for children to act out._

_You don't have the right to sing about this._

Medren put down the script. He put his hand on it, on Stefen's suicide note, his declaration of war on every other Bard who would ever try to write about it, and he wept.

***

Medren didn't _want_ to tell Jisa, not while she was still mourning both her parents and her uncle, not while she had to stay strong and accept being Chosen, not while she sat through the celebrations around Treven's coronation and had to keep a smile on her face.

But he couldn't avoid it, either. He congratulated them, still undecided on what to say, and Jisa—Jisa with her enormous Empathic talent—took one look at his face and went pale.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, Medren, no."

"He might still be alive," Medren said. "He wasn't in our room. That's all I know." He didn't mention the song, not yet. He'd be the one to perform it when it came to it, knew that was why Stefen had left it to him, but now wasn't the time. "He might still be out there."

He didn't believe it, and Jisa didn't either, but she tightened her lips and drew herself up. "I'll put out an alert," she said. "I'll have people keep an eye out for him. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"Maybe back to that place," Medren said. "I think he'd want to get as close to Uncle Vanyel as he could."

"I'll send a messenger to the guard outpost."

"Thank you," Medren said, and Jisa's eyes welled up.

"He's our friend too," she said.

***

Perhaps it was because so many people were looking for him that Stefen wasn't able to just sneak back in and pretend that nothing had happened, though it seemed, from what Medren heard, that he did his best. Medren wished he'd seen it, but the first he knew of it was a breathless guard running up and rapping on the door and telling him to come quick.

Stefen had, he found out, just walked back up and was intercepted at the entrance to the Collegium, and it was _that_ scene that he walked in on, Jisa actually shaking him. Stefen, hands flailing, was assuring her he was _fine_ , he just needed to get out for a bit. Honestly.

Medren met his eyes from across the room, and Stefen faltered briefly. But Medren, more tolerant than he'd like to be, didn't say anything to interrupt, let them finally relax, and waited until Stefen was free before falling in to flank him as they went back to their room.

He didn't speak until the door was closed, and found his breath choking a little in his throat when he tried to. After a few false starts, he said, "Couldn't go through with it? Or did you fail?"

"It's complicated," Stefen said. He took a slow seat on the bed and rubbed at his face with his hands. His eyes, Medren noticed, were finally focusing, but in exchange, he looked exhausted, miserable. Not as exhausted and miserable as expected, not as much as he should for someone who'd been subduing those feelings all this time, but exhausted and miserable nonetheless.

"You _did_ try."

"It's complicated," Stefen repeated again, into his hands. He drew several visible breaths, shoulders rising and falling. "I hate this. I hate everything about this. I want to see him, I want to be with him. Do you know what a broken lifebond feels like?"

"Stef—"

"Once you lifebond, it's like your soul, your heart, moves over to fit the other's in your own chest. Like you're overlapping," Stefen said, muffled. "You feel what they're feeling, they feel what you're feeling, you're... harmonizing. That's what it feels like. Harmonized chords, the type that give you chills. The thing is it's not like it stops when they die. It just goes on into nothingness. Like an opened vein pouring out blood."

Medren glanced, but Stefen's wrists were unmarked. "Bleeding out emotionally...?"

"It's supposed to bounce off something but it doesn't. It's not like when you're just plain not lifebonded, just one person, and it bounces around inside yourself properly. It's not like that at all. A cliff has crumbled away and your feelings are just thrown out into that chasm. It's like breathing in ice cold air and feeling your lungs freeze and trying to speak and feeling your voice sucked out of you by the cold wind. You're constantly shouting through that just to be a person again and it's terrible."

"Mm," Medren said. He came and sat next to Stefen, putting an arm around him.

"It's hell," Stefen said. "And I'm going to live it for the rest of my life."

"You will live, though?"

"Yes," Stefen said miserably. "Yes."

***

Stefen performed Magic's Price for the first time one month later. Medren came to watch him, watched him enter the crowded court waiting for entertainment, and saw Stefen walking as if he were royalty himself, strong and centered and with merciless eyes.

Medren watched his declaration of war, and saw it sink in. Vanyel's death was Stefen's to describe, nobody else's, and he told them, in as many words, that it would be forever unknown.

***

Medren wasn't sure what he was expecting to happen after that, what sort of strange healing process would follow, but what he saw, what he heard about, made no sense. It began with Stefen politely insisting that he sit in on the court as he had in Randale's time, performing, and why would Jisa and Treven argue? They were his friend, he had helped them when they'd wanted to marry, he had helped Jisa's father through that terrible time.

And at first it was just that (Medren heard), just performing.

But eventually, Stefen began to speak up, too. The supplicants would bewail the lack of a needed Herald-Mage, and Stefen would clear his throat.

"Actually, this reminds me of a song. May I, my lord?" and he'd launch into some ballad or another about some Herald—not a Herald-Mage, but a Herald—who had dealt with a similar situation.

"It's uncanny," Withen told Medren once, when they were at dinner together, after he'd finished describing Stefen's latest intrusion into the counsel. "It's like he wants to forget that Van... that he ever..."

Medren shook his head at once. "He doesn't," he said. "He couldn't. But perhaps people are hanging onto that too much. We can't do anything about Uncle Van's death, and... you know what Vanyel was like. He hated that people underestimated Heralds and worshipped Herald-Mages. Maybe Stef's just trying to live out his will, Grandfather."

Withen had sighed, gazing down at his plate with more depression than pensiveness. "You might be right," he'd said.

When Stefen wasn't intruding on political matters, he was composing. He was found surrounded by historical texts more often than anything else these days, looking up various Heraldic achievements and composing ballads and epics around them. Some of these people Medren had never even heard of.

"What are you doing, Stef?" he asked finally. "What is all this?"

 

"I'll tell you someday," Stefen said, distracted, and gave him a genuine smile.

***

Nine years later, 'someday' still hadn't happened, but neither had any other changes in Stef's life. He looked more mature now, his unruly hair trimmed neatly, and he was a welcomed presence in court as a member of the counsel himself with his historical expertise, but he was still doing the same thing: bringing up Heraldic precedent, using it to change situations, composing endlessly. Medren couldn't remember the last time Stefen's fingers weren't dyed with ink.

And that was _all_ he was doing.

He'd moved into Vanyel's old chambers without any further danger signs, but whenever Medren was in town, he'd ditch them to hang out with Medren in their old shared room which Medren still used when at the Collegium. 

"Stef, my darling," Medren said, unpacking his bag. "I picked you up some of those Karsite texts you were asking for."

"My hero, as always."

"Are these going to vanish into Uncle Van's room as always?"

"Have you seen his bookshelves? I inherited a treasure trove," Stefen said, smiling. 

" _I_ have, but has anyone else seen them?"

Stef blinked at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, from what I've heard you're celibate. Completely. Since... back then."

Another blink, then a laugh. "That I am. Not my ideal state of being, but not much I can do about that one."

He'd feared as much. Medren hesitated, trying to think of how to put it, then sighed. "You know," he said carefully. "It's been a long time now. Uncle Van would... he wouldn't want you to cut yourself off from whatever happiness you could have. I mean, if he'd done so after Tylendel's death, you two would have never..."

"That situation's a little different," Stefen said, looking down at the cover of the book instead of at Medren. "After Tylendel, Van was single. Me, though, I'm taken."

 

"How is it different?" Medren asked.

Stefen looked up again, gaze serious. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

So, finally, Stefen did. Medren leaned forward, hands clasped, listening to it. It was absurd. Vanyel's ghost interrupting his suicide, tasking him with convincing the kingdom they didn't need Herald-Mages, with the reward of eternal unlife at his side...

"I'm sure you think I was hallucinating," Stefen said eventually. "Who knows? I've asked myself that a million times. I wasn't in a good state, you know. Maybe I'm doing all this off a delusion and in the end it'll only be me and the Shadow-Lover."

Medren sighed slowly. "Well," he said. "If anyone could find a loophole in a normal death, it's Uncle Van."

"He lived absurdities, didn't he?" Stefen said, and laughed softly, tears welling up.

"Come here, you," Medren said, and held out an arm. Stefen flopped over into it, and Medren toppled them both back into his bed, hugging him. "I'm not strung right to challenge your celibacy, but there's nothing holding you back from a friend's love, is there?"

Stefen clung to him. "I didn't think I could tell anyone," he whispered. "I didn't think they'd believe me."

"You clearly underestimated what I'm willing to believe. _I_ can't believe you waited almost ten years to tell me this," Medren said, and stroked his hair until Stefen had cried himself out. 

"Thanks," Stefen said finally, sniffing, sitting up and wiping his eyes. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, idiot," Medren sighed. "I just meant that if I'd known about this, I'd have been helping you for a decade already. Two of us together can push this a bit further than one alone, right?"

Stefen burst into fresh tears, and Medren rolled over, digging in his pocket for a handkerchief. 

"Y-you don't have to," Stefen managed, through hiccupping breaths. "You've done enough, you're always there for me—"

"I want to. I'll give you another task for it, though."

"Oh...?"

Medren smiled at him, holding the handkerchief up to him. "When your time finally comes, say hi to Uncle Van for me," he said. "From the sounds of things, I won't be going the same place as you two."

Stefen stared at him, green eyes wet and wide, and then slowly took the handkerchief. "You really do believe me."

"Your nose is running; blow it. Honestly," Medren sighed. "What would you do without me?"


End file.
